Poetry of My Soul's Work

12

The Day I Was Raped Because I Did Not Tell
4-26-2003
Saturday

He said he needed to talk to me and meet with me alone.
I said, no, you’re a married man,
If you want to talk to me, it will have to be over the phone.

He said I know you are the only one who will understand how I feel.
Because your brother committed suicide, and that hurts you still.

I agreed to meet with him alone as long as it was on my parent’s land.
My parents weren’t home, he had been secretly watching me,
He had it all planned.

Thinking I was helping out a troubled person in time of need,
I met with him alone on what I thought was safe and protected ground.
After I innocently asked what his trouble was,
He pinned me with his hands and shoved me down.

He kissed me deep and hard and told me
He had waited a long time just for the chance just to get me alone.
He told me how carefully
He planned to get me away from everyone and my home.

I told him over and over begging him to stop, threatening to tell his wife.
He said she’d believe anything he told her
And she’d come after me with her gun and end my life.

He threatened to turn the story around and say he was just out fishing.
He told me he would tell her I came on to him
And when I saw him I was all over him and I started kissing.

He showed me his fishing pole he had premeditatedly stashed in his jeep.
He had brought it along to cover up his malicious plan of deceit.

He said he’d tell her how honestly he wanted to tell her because
He was racked with guilt.
He told me he would say that he just could not help himself,
Because I was so pretty and well built.

He told me he would tell his wife that I had threatened to go to the police
And cry rape if he disclosed.
He told me he would tell her I didn’t tell him until afterwards that
I was only seventeen years old.

But that is a big fat lie because I told him my true age.
I told him I was a minor
But it still didn’t stop him from raping me, filling me with rage.

I then told him I would tell my daddy, and he would go to jail.
He threatened to make me look like a whore,
Drag my good family name through mud, if I chose to tell.

He said, “Now you don’t really want to put your parents
Through all of that, now do you?
After losing your brother and everything they have been through.

I know you won’t tell your daddy on me –
Because you didn’t tell him about Henry.”

He told me he had talked with Henry, one of his neighbors, and
Henry had bragged about his plan of deceit.
Henry told him how he got me to leave his house senior party by asking me if
I wanted to drive into town with him and get something to eat.

Henry told him how I had been so drunk I passed out in the back seat.
Henry told him that when I woke up we were on a deserted road
And he had his hands all over me.

He told me I didn’t tell my daddy when Henry threatened
To abandon me on an old, deserted, country road.
He told me how Henry had bragged about his threats of pushing me
Out of his van if I did not have sex with him and leaving me all alone in the cold.

He said, “I know you won’t tell your Daddy and even if you do.
It won’t matter because he knows me, and he will believe me and not you.”

I fought him off as long as I could.
He told me that I really wanted him
Or I would not have met him alone as a whore would.

I told him I only met with him alone
Because I thought he needed to talk to me in his time of need.
I told him I didn’t know I was being deceived.

He told me that no judge would believe that I was that naïve and dumb.
He told me that I really wanted him or I would not have agreed to come.

I thought of running away but I feared for my life,
My survival instincts told me not to run away.
My instincts told me if I did, I would not live to see another day.

But wait, I did try to run.
He grabbed me by the arm and told me I wasn’t leaving there until
I had pleased him and he was done.

So before I knew it he was on top and inside of me
And I begged him to hurry up and be through.
I told him he was hurting me and he replied if I would just loosen up;
I just might enjoy it too.

It was not only my body that was raped on that day.
As my soul tried to safely watch the horror from the trees above,
I begged it to also take me away.

My soul gently tried to comfort me and said not to worry because
He may rape my body but he would not rape my mind.
I asked my soul, how will you survive?
I will lie to my body when I cry.

I will let my mind do some creative editing of this day.
I’ll tell my mind that because I agreed to meet with him I was not really raped.

I’ll say to my mind, it’s all- my fault, I really had control over my body,
I shouldn’t have met with him, I’ll somehow protect my mind.
I know it sounds dishonest,
But I was merely trying to myself be kind.

I know it sounds like such horrible lies.
I didn’t do anything any different
Than many women who have been raped before me have done,
In order to survive.

But my mind and soul were also raped, because
Rape isn’t just a physical assa